All or Nothing?

Another urban myth about raw food that definitely needs putting straight, is that to get the benefits of raw food you need to eat exclusively raw food, or as near to it as possible.

That’s not true; it really doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

The fact is, as soon as you start bringing more raw food into your diet (which will likely be displacing some of the cooked food as it does so) you very likely will start feeling a difference very quickly.

You’re more likely to notice a difference quickly if you are:

Aged under 40

In “good health”

Allowing the less good foods and drinks to fall away

Eating according to your appetite (i.e. not overeating)

Keeping the raw foods you do eat pure and high water content – mostly fruit and veg

However, these are only guidelines and are not to be taken as definitive as there are many factors that come into play. I have known some people who I would have thought would feel the difference quickly not to, and vice-versa. A lot of it comes down to how clean your overall diet is as well as the raw food component increasing.

So, I cannot predict how fast things will change for you, but what I can tell you is this:

The more fresh raw food you eat the better you will look and feel

This is not a race so always take it at a pace that feels good to you

Clean up the cooked food part of your diet so it doesn’t take the shine off the raw

With the raw foods, put your focus on the fresh fruits and veggies – the other foods are great too, but because the fruits and veggies are high water content, they will not only rejuvenate you, but they’ll help detoxify you faster too

You’ll feel a difference just by increasing the amount of raw food you eat, but to really get a feel for it you want to tip the balance so that half or more of your diet is raw

One final note before we address the issue of 100% raw, and this point I cannot stress enough, every step of this journey should feel exciting and fascinating to you. Don’t fall into the trap of having this be “another diet” or a “should”… that is not what this is about at all.

Eating raw and living foods is a lifestyle choice, literally a choice between life and…

…well, once you start eating more raw you’ll know what it’s a choice between.

100% Raw

There’s been a lot of talk in raw food circles about the pros and cons of going “all raw” as it’s called, over the years.

When I first got into raw food you could count the number of 100%’ers on one or two hands, so rare were these “god-like” people!

As my own raw food journey progressed and I started meeting other raw food enthusiasts I realised that most people, including myself, were really very happy around the three-quarters (75%) mark. In real terms, this equates to having a totally raw breakfast with lunch and dinner comprising of 50% raw and 50% cooked food, roughly speaking. This is honestly so easy anyone can do it. I’ll show you how on the “How to Get Started” page.

At 75%-80% raw, which works for most people’s lives and preferences, it really is entirely possible to look and feel great (by this point, just a few months in, I had lost about 20 lbs. and felt like a brand new Karen). However, what tends to happen is that the better you feel the more you want to explore how much better it can get! So I set about spending increasing periods of time eating exclusively raw food, and here’s what I found…

The energy was AMAZING!

It’s at this point that I felt the most profound shifts of all, as if something very powerful was going on that was beyond my total comprehension; that changes were happening on multiple levels in ways that I couldn’t fully understand. In fact, some days I felt what can only be described as super-human, as if I could be, do or have anything, and that anything was possible.

Discovering this place and level of aliveness was a huge turning point in my life. Experiencing this first-hand, in my own body, showed me that there are many magical things in life that we can tap into if we do the right things and experiment outside the box.

In some raw food books you will come across stories that will blow your mind – I’m not going to do that just yet as we are just getting started, but take it from me, as fabulous as eating 50% or 75% raw is, when you find a way of eating all-raw that feels really good to you for extended periods of time you will truly get the meaning of “raw power”.

And while this may sound amazing (it is), it’s not for everyone. In my work as a raw food coach and teacher working and speaking with literally thousands of raw food enthusiasts, I have found that most people actually do not want to feel that amazing.

It sounds crazy I know, but with that level of aliveness and energy comes a new set of challenges, specifically “now what do I do with all this energy?” It is that question and all that goes with that that roughly 75% of raw food coaching revolves around – quite simply people are just not used to feeling and looking that good!

Therefore, I generally recommend that you up the amount of raw food at a pace that suits you and then you can acclimatise gradually to the increase in energy – unless you feel ready to really go for it…

That being said, right now we are still at the very beginning. You may be thinking that if that’s the downside then “sign me up!” I truly believe that every man, woman and child walking the earth should have the opportunity to at least try this energy on for size and see where it takes them, because my experience is that it’s places most of us never dreamed possible…